(RNS) — Last week, at Shabbat dinner, someone at the table asked me, “Would you like some farro?”

Without missing a beat, I replied: “Didn’t you hear? We don’t serve Pharaoh anymore.”

A groaner? Perhaps. A classic rabbinic pun? Definitely.

But like many Jewish jokes, it turns out there was more truth in it than I realized.

Farro is not just a trendy grain that shows up in upscale salads and artisanal soups. It is a category of ancient wheats that people have cultivated for over 10,000 years. It is hardy, resilient and able to grow in poor soil and harsh climates. It is rich in fiber and nutrients. It was perfectly suited for early civilizations. Including ancient Egypt.

Farro grew along the Nile. It sustained the population. It fed workers, including our ancestors.

The Egyptians used farro to make bread, porridge and even beer. Archaeologists have found grains of it in tombs — because, apparently, you needed your carbs in the afterlife, too. And yes — farro acquired a nickname, “Pharaoh’s grain.”

Which brings us, naturally, to Passover, which begins Wednesday evening (April 1). We are about to observe one of the most joyous, central and complex holidays in the Jewish calendar.

But Pesach did not begin as a single, unified observance. Originally, there were two distinct festivals.

The first was Pesach — Passover — on the 14th day of Nisan. It was a family-based ritual in which Israelites sacrificed a lamb and ate it together, recalling the night of the Exodus.

The second was Chag HaMatzot — the Festival of Unleavened Bread — beginning on the 15th of Nisan and lasting seven days. This was most likely an agricultural pilgrimage festival marking the beginning of the barley harvest.

Over time, these two observances fused into one. But perhaps that fusion was not arbitrary. What if these two strands — historical and agricultural — were always more connected than we assumed? What if avoiding chametz — or leavened products like bread, cake, pasta, beer, and for Ashkenazic Jews, legumes — was not only about remembering the haste of the Israelites when they left Egypt, but about rejecting Egypt itself?

Egypt was a bread civilization. Not just any bread, but leavened bread — that which rises, is processed, controlled and transformed. Bread that reflects human mastery over nature.

Egypt was a civilization of mastery and control; power flowed from the top down. Pharaoh was not merely a ruler — he was divine. Human beings were tools in a vast machine designed to produce stability, permanence and grandeur.

Bread that rises is not just food. It is a metaphor. Contrast that with matzah: flat, simple and unadorned. The bread of the poor.

It is anti-Pharaoh food. It says, we will not participate in your system of excess, control and artificial elevation. That resistance is not merely dietary, but ideological.

The Torah, from beginning to end, is a sustained argument against what we might call “Egyptianism,” or the belief that power is absolute, rulers are divine, and human beings exist to serve systems rather than the other way around. It implies stability matters more than justice, and order matters more than dignity.

The Exodus is not only a physical departure from a geographic place. It is a spiritual and political departure from a worldview.

Consider what the Israelites do on the eve of their liberation: They slaughter a lamb. Why? The lamb was sacred in Egyptian religion. It was associated with divinity. To slaughter it was to make a bold and dangerous statement: Your gods are not our gods.

It is to say, we are leaving — not just your land, but your theology.

And then comes Shabbat. In Egypt, slaves do not get a day off. Time belongs to the masters.

The Torah introduces the revolutionary idea that every human being — even the servant, even the stranger — is entitled to rest.

Then, there is the question of life and death. Ancient Egypt was obsessed with death. Its greatest achievements — the pyramids, the tombs — were monuments to the afterlife. Its sacred texts, like the Book of the Dead, were guides to navigating the world beyond.

Judaism takes a different path. Our “priests” — kohanim — cannot have any contact with the dead. They cannot enter cemeteries. Mummification — the original denial of death (yes, there is a pun there; get it?) — was an Egyptian thing. Israelites did not mummify. Jews do not gaze at the faces of the dead in open coffins; funerals have closed coffins. We bury our dead, ideally, as soon as possible, so that we do not linger in the presence of death.

We turn away from death, and toward life. We are obsessed with life. We insist: Uvacharta vachayim—choose life.

And then there is the Torah’s most repeated commandment: “You shall not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

This is not merely historical memory. It is moral reprogramming to say, do not become what you escaped. Do not internalize Egypt.

Fast-forward several centuries to 419 B.C.E. Jews are in Egypt again — in particular, a Jewish military colony on Elephantine, an island in the Nile, now part of the city of Aswan.

A man named Hananiah sends a memo to a man named Yedaniah, the leader of the Elephantine community. It’s what historians call the “Passover Papyrus.”

He instructs them: Remove leaven from your homes. Do not consume fermented products. Saying, in other words, even here, even now in Egypt, remember who you are. 

The avoidance of chametz becomes a portable identity — a boundary that says, this is who we are, and this is who we are not.

Which brings us back to that Shabbat dinner, and that bowl of farro or “Pharaoh’s grain”: The food of empire and sustenance of a civilization that built wonders on the backs of slaves.

On Passover, we remove chametz from our homes, but we are doing more than cleaning our kitchens. We are purging ourselves of Egypt — of arrogance, hierarchy and the illusion that power justifies itself.

You can take the Israelites out of Egypt, but taking Egypt out of the Israelites is an ongoing task. Every year, every generation and every kitchen must say, I’ll pass on the farro. We don’t serve Pharaoh anymore.

My wishes for a sweet and liberating Pesach.